Carmen

COMPOSER GEORGES BIZET (1838 – 1875) Many music-lovers, asked to name some compositions by Georges Bizet, will hem and haw after they’ve mentioned Carmen. You are at least 100% more knowledgeable if you attended Utah Opera’s production of The Pearl Fishers (Les Pêcheurs de perles)…

LIBRETTISTS LUDOVIC HALÉVY (1834 – 1908) HENRI MEILHAC (1831 – 1897) It’s almost impossible to separate these two authors who were collaborators on plays and librettos for over twenty years. Grove’s Dictionary of Opera did, and Meilhac was awarded a mere paragraph! So, in the…

NOVELIST PROSPER MÉRIMÉE (1803 – 1870) Like the three men – Bizet, Halévy and Meilhac – who immortalized his novella Carmen, Prosper Mérimée was Parisian by birth. The child of agnostic parents, he was brought up, essentially, to defy the status quo. At the age…

READINGS. A quick scan through Amazon’s offerings shows only one English translation of Prosper Mérimée’s story. Prosper Mérimée: Carmen and other stories was published in 1989 by Oxford University Press; Nicholas Jotcham translated the nine stories and provided an Introduction and a Chronology. Oxford University…